Broward cities concerned New River tunnel-bridge dispute will delay commuter rail buildout

The dispute between Broward County and the city of Fort Lauderdale over the choice of a tunnel or bridge for the New River railroad crossing has raised concerns among other cities that a long-awaited commuter rail system might be delayed, or become an opportunity lost.

From Hallandale to Deerfield Beach, local political leaders are becoming nervous about the potential delays in the development of the proposed Broward Commuter Rail service that would operate along the Florida East Coast Railway line.

The immediate chief hurdle: a new rail crossing at downtown Fort Lauderdale’s New River. Mayor Dean Trantalis and business interests that support him want a tunnel. Broward County commissioners and other local leaders favor a bridge.

The next window for a funding application to Washington opens in February and the county is nowhere near the point where it can submit one. If no agreement is reached, some fear that hundreds of millions of dollars will be lost.

Gregory Stuart is executive director of the Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization, which works with 31 local governments and municipalities to coordinate transportation policies across the county. It’s responsible for deciding how to collaboratively apply for and spend federal money on projects.

In a recent interview, Stuart told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that time is of the essence for submitting an application to Washington for federal funding. The window for 2024 opens in February.

“I think the county is going to move forward with a selection for a crossing,” he said. “There is lots of time to have a discussion. But we are running out of time to make things happen.”

Lagging behind?

“The thing is we don’t even have engineering drawings,” Stuart said. “It would be highly unusual for the federal government to hand over $1 billion or $2 billion for a project that has no design.”

“If they don’t understand this, there might be a problem,” he added.

For example, the application by Brightline that last week produced a $3 billion federal grant for its “Brightline West” high-speed rail project between Las Vegas, Nevada, and the Los Angeles area, took up to 4,000 pages and years of work. A New River tunnel would likely cost $3 billion to build, according to a consultant’s study. Each of three bridge options is under $1 billion.

The national competition for rail grants is stiff. Last week, the Biden Administration announced $8.2 billion for 10 major passenger rail projects across the country, including “Brightline West.” The money is from a pool of $66 billion allocated for rail from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which runs through 2026.

The New River debate, however, continues.

At a joint city-county workshop last Tuesday, Trantalis stuck to his insistence on the need for a tunnel, and vowed to push ahead with another study to examine the cost and design of a tunnel.

This came after a consulting firm called Whitehouse looked at three bridge alternatives and a tunnel and laid out the costs and other findings.

The mayor reiterated his arguments that a bridge would stifle progress, divide the city between east and west, and again pose waterway traffic problems for marine interests.

Local business interests supported by the Downtown Development Authority agree with the mayor.

“The investment pipeline we established moving forward would be negatively impacted by vertical infrastructure that would cut the town into two,” Jenni Morejon, president and CEO of the Downtown Development Authority, said in an interview. “It’s those connections for pedestrians and the public spaces would be impacted, as well as the usability of real estate next to a tall bridge. Downtown Fort Lauderdale is a very compact downtown, unlike big cities like Miami and Jacksonville, which are spread out.”

But county commissioners, citing the cost and lengthy time it would take to build an underground passage beneath the river, recently opted 9-0 for a bridge. Three of five city commissioners have agreed.

“We have a consensus among the Broward Commission that we favor a bridge,” said County Mayor Nan Rich at last week’s workshop. “We have to move forward as cities north and south are building housing and projects expecting rail service.”

Added Lamar Fisher, the immediate past mayor: “Broward has promised that a commuter rail will serve the south and north communities. Time is of the essence. We want to work together, but this is a county project.”

Restiveness among cities

While the county and the Fort Lauderdale mayor have publicly aired their differences, Broward cities on both sides of the New River have made their concerns known about the economic consequences of delaying a decision on the river crossing.

Collectively, they have green-lighted the construction of hundreds of millions of dollars in transit-oriented projects in their respective downtowns, where new residential and commercial developments are either on the rise or on the drawing boards.

Their actions were largely prompted by the emergence of Brightline, the higher-speed rail line that now operates between Miami and Orlando along the Florida East Coast Railway corridor, with stops in Aventura, Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton and West Palm Beach.

Brightline’s momentum, along with a surge of inbound population to South Florida from the Northeast and elsewhere around the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic, gave a new impetus for the Florida Department of Transportation to update a two-decade-old idea to establish a “Coastal Link” rail line from Miami to Jupiter, with station stops among a number of cities in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.

Since January 2021, the state transportation department and Broward County Transit have evaluated alternatives for a separate and distinct commuter rail along the FEC rail corridor from Aventura in Miami-Dade County into Broward. That evaluation, according to a recent FDOT newsletter, “is a direct result of a previous study known as the ‘Coastal Link’ that evaluated 85 miles of commuter rail in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties.”

In August 2022, the County Commission adopted the Broward Commuter Rail South plan to extend commuter rail service on the FEC corridor north from Aventura, a distance of 11.5 miles. The project is, in effect, an initial step to move commuter rail north of Miami-Dade, which has allocated millions to build multiple stations for a commuter line between Aventura and downtown Miami.

For Broward South, the FDOT has recommended station stops for Hollywood, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and a location near Broward Health just south of the New River.

But the makeup of a more efficient New River crossing has remained a political flashpoint between Fort Lauderdale and county, even though most agree that the decades-old drawbridge now in service is insufficient to accommodate trains operated by Brightline, the Florida East Coast Railway freight line and the proposed commuter rail line.

Ahead of last week’s city-county workshop, mayors whose cities not only desire, but now expect, commuter rail service in their towns checked in with letters expressing a sense of urgency to resolve the river crossing issue and expedite the commuter project.

”It is time to move forward,” Hollywood Mayor Josh Levy told the Sun Sentinel on Friday, “Every study has shown the tunnel concept is incredibly expensive and the ratio of expense to ridership wouldn’t help the application score in the federal review process. The money is not unlimited with the federal government.”

The “BCR South” project, Levy said, “is moving forward as the first segment of Broward Commuter Rail. BCR South has already received funding support, by the county and state, and our city for the station.”

“We are moving forward with the FTA (Federal Transit Administration), and our regional partners, in Miami-Dade, FEC (Florida East Coast) and Brightline,” he added.

But to the north of the river, cities such as Oakland Park, Pompano Beach and Deerfield Beach are getting restive over the river crossing debate. All three have been recommended for coastal link station stops by the FDOT. None is in line for a Brightline stop in the future.

“We, as a region, have been planning for Coastal Link for well over a decade. Individual cities have created zoning districts and acquired land, all with the idea that we would eventually have commuter rail running along the eastern corridor in our County,” wrote Pompano Beach Mayor Rex Hardin.

“Better transit opportunities is a vital step to improve the housing affordability in all of our cities, which is critically important,” he said. “However, the issue of how to cross the New River has languished for too long and is impeding progress towards a new way to travel for Broward County residents and visitors. Numerous studies have shown that the most economical crossing alternative is a bridge. Some folks may desire a tunnel of some sort but the extra costs involved make that idea simply not feasible.

“With all due respect for the City of Fort Lauderdale,” Hardin added, “this is not a City matter, it is a regional matter. If the City of Fort Lauderdale were willing to pay the extra expense for a tunnel then we would have already been moving forward on the project. That has not happened so far.”

Deerfield Beach Mayor Bill Ganz wrote that the pace at which the Broward commuter project is moving “should be embarrassing to us all.”

“The vision of the Coastal Link project cannot be achieved without commuter rail services spanning from downtown Miami to West Palm Beach,” he said. “The need for Broward County to move forward on this project in its entirety is now. We as elected officials and community leaders owe that to our residents and business community and I implore you to resolve the New River Crossing issue expeditiously.”

Potential ridership there for the taking

Whenever it is that the entirety of the project is built, there appears to be little doubt that the ridership will be there when the trains start rolling.

Although South Florida commuters and other travelers have long-standing love affairs with their cars, evidence is rising that many are weary of increasingly congested streets and highways, and are willing to rely more on rail.

Brightline, since its start-up in 2018, has compiled annual passenger numbers that exceed a million people when excluding the hiatus it took due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

And last week, Tri-Rail, the publicly subsidized, three-decade-old commuter line which uses the state-owned rail corridor west of I-95 between the West Palm Beach area and Miami International Airport, announced a surge in passenger traffic for 2023.

“We are in a very unique situation here,” David Dech, executive director of the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority, the overseer of Tri-Rail, said in an interview Friday. “Brightline has stirred so much excitement for rail. When is the last time you’ve heard about normal everyday people being excited about riding the train? You’ve got extended ridership on (the Tri-Rail) side and we think we have a good story to tell. From being a lifetime railroader, this is a first for me.”

He said Tri-Rail is “routinely seeing days of over 14,000 riders a day.”

That’s short of the pre-COVID daily ridership of 15,000, Dech said, but in a year, “I think we’re blowing that number away.’

Dech added that Tri-Rail would entertain an invitation to be the operator of the coastal commuter line.

“That is a decision that is going to be made in Broward County and in Miami-Dade,” he said. “We have very a good partnership with them but it’s going to be made by the people owning and operating this. We’ll see what happens. If we are not the operator, we are still a partner.”